The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns nationwide about the security of the November elections and the ability of the state to keep tight controls on the thousands of machines that will be used next month.

The availability of the code - the written instructions that tell the machines what to do - is important because some computer scientists worry that the machines are vulnerable to malicious and virtually undetectable vote-switching software.

This year, a team of Princeton University computer scientists obtained a slightly older version of the code than that sent to Kagan and found that a programmer with access to the voting machines and their passwords could install malicious software or viruses.

Oregon is the only state so far to have all mail-in ballots. It then takes a Scantron to "tally the votes." If everybody had this system, more poeple would vote, and we could rent the Scantrons from colleges and high schools, and not even have to buy new equipment. Schools would make a little money, and all votes would be counted. To those that say that this system is prey to "unregistered voters" (read illegal brown people), I say, that it is less liable to that than to 'electronic" votes being highjacked.

Oct 24, '06

it is too late to do anything this election but we need to keep the voter interest up and some hard work done to protect our voting from all who would disenfrancise [sp]